This disclosure relates generally to disclosure relates generally to presenting content to users of an online system, and more specifically to leveraging content previously provided to the online system by a user to generate content items for presentation to other users.
Online systems, such as social networking systems, allow users to connect to and to communicate with other users of the online system. Users may create profiles on an online system that are tied to their identities and include information about the users, such as interests and demographic information. The users may be individuals or entities such as corporations or charities. Online systems allow users to easily communicate and to share content with other online system users by providing content to an online system for presentation to other users. Content provided to an online system by a user may be declarative information provided by a user, status updates, check-ins to locations, images, photographs, videos, text data, or any other information a user wishes to share with additional users of the online system. An online system may also generate content for presentation to a user, such as content describing actions taken by other users on the online system.
Additionally, many online systems commonly allow publishing users (e.g., businesses) to sponsor presentation of content on an online system to gain public attention for a user's products or services or to persuade other users to take an action regarding the publishing user's products or services. Content for which the online system receives compensation in exchange for presenting to users is referred to as “sponsored content.” Many online systems receive compensation from a publishing user for presenting online system users with certain types of sponsored content provided by the publishing user. Frequently, online systems charge a publishing user for each presentation of sponsored content to an online system user or for each interaction with sponsored content by an online system user. For example, an online system receives compensation from a publishing user each time a content item provided by the publishing user is displayed to another user on the online system or each time another user is presented with a content item on the online system and interacts with the content item (e.g., selects a link included in the content item), or each time another user performs another action after being presented with the content item.
Conventional online systems rely on a publishing user to create content items for presentation to other online system users. While this allows the publishing user to customize content items that are presented by an online system, creative multiple content items for presentation by the online system may consume time and resources of the publishing user. For publishing users with limited resources, it is often impractical to create a large number of content items for distribution by the online system, limiting effectiveness of distribution of the content items to other users via the online system. However, many online systems maintain a page of content for a publishing user, where content provided to the online system by the publishing user may be accessed by other online system users accessing the page. While this allows the publishing user to easily provide content to the online system, distribution of content included on a page maintained by the online system is limited to other users who access the page of content rather than active dissemination of the content by the online system to other users.